Lemonade Stand
Earning by running a business
Kids run a lemonade stand across a week: setting prices, buying supplies, reading the weather and the crowd, and turning effort into profit.
A Guide for Grown-Ups
A Guide for Grown-Ups
MoneyEdu.kids is a set of friendly browser games that teach children ages 7 to 12 how money works.
Here's what kids can learn and how you can help it stick.
How It Works
No finance background needed, and nothing to install. Pick a game, pick a level, and play.
Learner
Ages 7-8
Bigger buttons, simpler choices, and plenty of hints. A gentle first taste of each idea.
Builder
Ages 9-10
Full controls and real decisions, with a hand when it is needed.
Entrepreneur
Ages 11-12
Advanced tools, tougher conditions, and real consequences for the choices they make.
- Built to play together. The games are made for a grown-up and a child side by side. Not everything is meant for a 7-year-old to puzzle out alone; your questions are part of the lesson.
- Safe to fail. Losing a round is how the lessons land. Setbacks are gentle and recoverable, and no child is ever stuck or made to feel bad.
- Nothing to set up, nothing collected. The games run in any web browser. There are no accounts, no sign-ins, and the games don't collect personal information.
- One idea per game. Each game teaches a single money idea well. Every game can also be paired with a Lessons page that includes details, examples, and conversation starters to use together.
What Kids Can Learn
Across the eight launch games, children practice a connected set of money skills: the same foundations recommended by national financial-education standards, scaled to this age.
- Understanding money - recognizing coins and bills, counting them out, and making change. Checkout Dash
- Smart spending - telling needs from wants, comparing value, and staying within what you have. Need It or Want It? Checkout Dash
- Saving up - setting a goal and saving toward it, and the patience that takes. Goal Getter
- Watching money grow - how money set aside earns a little more over time, and how that adds up. Money Garden
- Planning ahead - budgeting for costs that come back again and again, and keeping a cushion for surprises. Happy Pet Planner
- Earning and enterprise - turning effort into money by running a small business: setting prices, covering costs, and reading what customers want. Lemonade Stand
- Investing and managing risk - putting money to work when the future is uncertain, and spreading it across choices so one bad break does not sink you. Harvest Hill Farm
The Games
Each game owns one idea and teaches it through play. Every level - Learner, Builder, Entrepreneur - is built in.
Happy Pet Planner
Planning for ongoing costs and surprises
Caring for a pet means costs that come back every week, plus the occasional surprise. Kids plan ahead, keep a cushion, and learn that some expenses never stop.
Harvest Hill Farm
Investing when the future is uncertain
Kids plant a farm where different crops do well in different weather, so spreading their planting protects them when conditions turn. An early, honest feel for risk, diversification, and reinvesting - never luck or betting.
Checkout Dash
Counting money and making change
Kids ring up customers and pay with exact coins, or work the register and make change. They build real fluency with money - the everyday math underneath every purchase.
Grocery Cart Quest
Stretching a budget; comparing value
With a set amount to spend and a list to fill, kids compare prices, weigh value, and make the money cover the whole trip. Budgeting you can feel.
Need It or Want It?
Telling needs from wants
Kids sort what they truly need from what they simply want, then make the call when they cannot have everything. The first habit behind every spending decision.
Goal Getter
Saving toward a goal
Kids pick something worth saving for and watch each deposit bring it closer. Delayed gratification, made visible - the payoff for waiting.
Money Garden
How money grows over time
Kids plant their savings and watch it bloom a little more each season, as interest earns interest. The quiet power of starting early.
How You Can Help
You do not need to be an expert - just curious, with a few good questions. The games do the teaching; you make it stick.
- Ask, don't tell. "What do you think happens if we raise the price?" teaches more than the answer does. Let them predict, try, and see.
- Tie it to real life. Point out the same idea at the store, at the credit union, or in everyday choices at home. The game is the rehearsal; life is the stage.
- Let them miss. A round that goes wrong is a free lesson. Resist the rescue, then talk about what happened.
- Play alongside them. Sit together. Let them drive, and be the voice that wonders out loud.
- Praise the thinking. Celebrate a smart choice even when the result did not go their way. Good decisions are the win.
Our Approach
A few promises about how these games teach.
- Safe failure. Setbacks are gentle and recoverable. The goal is always learning, never punishment.
- Real lessons, not luck. Outcomes follow from decisions, not chance. The games never teach gambling, betting, or get-rich-quick thinking - even the farm rewards prudence over a lucky guess.
- Built on real standards. The skills come from the national financial-education frameworks - the Jump$tart Coalition and the Council for Economic Education - scaled to ages 7 to 12.
- Honest by design. The math underneath is real. If a strategy would not work in life, it does not work in the game.
- Made for every kid. The games work with a keyboard and a screen reader, and the range of settings - a shop, a farm, a stand, a pet, a garden - means there is one for every child to love.